Walking the streets of Old City Philadelphia last month was a thrilling experience for me. I have always loved history, and particularly the stories of the great men and their deeds. American Revolutionary history was particularly fascinating because these were not foreign people like the great Romans or the even more foreign Egyptians and Babylonians. These were the founders of my country, a country that had a great deal of pride in its ideals and its heroes.

 

 

Of the classes I can recall from high school, among the most tedious was sophomore history. History class with Mr. Faulmann (an alias) was almost invariably the same. On an overhead projector, he would place an outline of the chapter he had assigned us to read and then proceed to read the outline aloud to us. We, the students, were required to copy the outline in our notebooks. That was all.

 

 

At St. Thomas More Academy, we have recently developed our understanding of what constitutes a Catholic liberal arts program. In developing this understanding, we have made several curriculum adjustments to better fit our image. One difficulty has been to come up with concrete ways to engage the lower grades in grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

 

 

The Catholic Schools Textbook Project is producing a 12-volume series of history/social studies textbooks and supporting materials specifically for Catholic schools and students. The project’s textbooks bring history to life - in the heart as well as the mind - and include the essential contribution of Catholics and the Faith to the story of development of civilization.